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SCL Elections, a closely linked sibling company of notorious political marketing and data syphoning firm Cambridge Analytica, has ignored a formal request from the Information Commissioner's Office to hand over the full data it holds on US Professor David Carroll (TechCrunch). Although Carroll is a US citizen, he is entitled to a copy of his data under European Law, as it was processed in the UK. He has now taken the case to the European Parliament. SCL Group shut down last month, but the ICO made it clear at the time that this would not suspend the obligation of the company, its staff and directors to cooperate with ongoing or future investigations.

1.4 billion years ago, a day on Earth lasted just 18 hours and 41 minutes, according to a new paper that pulls together astronomical data and geochemical analyses of ancient rocks (The Guardian). Since the Precambrian era, the length of a day has grown by one 74 thousandth of a second every year, due to the very gradually slowing rotation speed of the Earth. Meanwhile, the Moon has drifted 44,000km further away from the planet's surface.

Despite YouTube's assurances that it would fix algorithms that were incorrectly flagging personal and educational LGBT+ videos as adult content, YouTubers are still seeing their content age-restricted and demonetized (The Verge). Trans YouTuber Chase Ross highlights that including the very word "transgender" in the title triggered a video's automatic demonetization as "not suitable for most advertisers". A YouTube representative responded that the company's machine learning based flagging systems sometimes "get it wrong" and that "successful appeals ensure that our systems get better". Adding insult to injury, as we enter Pride month, LGBT+ creators are seeing homophobic adverts attached to videos that have not been demonetized, in breach of YouTube policies against discriminatory and hateful content.

In China, the government is developing a "social credit" system partly based on people’s routine behaviours with the ultimate goal of raising the "trustworthiness" of the country’s 1.4 billion citizens (WIRED). It might sound like a futuristic dystopian nightmare but the system is already a reality. The social credit system is already preventing people from buying airline and train tickets, stopping social gatherings from happening, and let men with high scores contact women on dating websites. Meanwhile, do-gooders under the incomplete system are rewarded with discounted energy bills and similar perks.

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GOG.com is giving away alien-fighting, XCOM-inspired strategy game Xenonauts for keeps to make the beginning of its summer sale (PC Gamer). It's available for Windows, Linux and macOS until 14:00 BST on June 6. More games are available as free bonuses should you actually buy anything in the sale, including Sunless Seas and Rime.

"Today is all about software," Apple CEO Tim Cook said as he took to the stage at WWDC 2018. And there was a lot of software news – though most of it more iterative than headline-grabbing. WIRED brings you all the highlights from WWDC 2018, including iOS 12 and Apple's plans for augmented reality

WIRED 05.18 is out now. As Apple closes in on becoming the first $1 trillion company we look at its next move, step into the battle to recreate dead celebrities as holograms and go onboard the world's biggest cruise ship. Subscribe now and save.